While I don’t condone deception and trickery, I do like to give people/companies the benefit of the doubt, and unless they screw up in a big way again I would not boycott them. I like to think that people can learn from their mistakes.

It’s WMA/WMV PlayForSure DRM, probably on a subscription basis. Your subscription is “free” I’m assuming but that implies it will expire at some point (as opposed to iTunes where the song is yours forever but you can’t share it).

I couldn’t find out during my brief browse of their site if the “ads” are web banners while you browse, “watch this before you get to download ads” or adverts stuck *into* the files.

But here’s the juicy bit, from Wikipedia:

“”Brody Ruckus” incident

In September 2006, Ruckus attempted to create the single largest group on Facebook as a promotional tool. An employee started a fictional student account under the name “Brody Ruckus.” The group created under this name, “If this group reaches 100,000 my girlfriend will have a threesome”, drew membership on the claim that if 100,000 people joined, the fictional character’s girlfriend “Holly” would have a threesome with “Ruckus” and another woman. Within a week, the group had reached 100,000 members. “Brody Ruckus” then promised to post pictures of his sexual encounter online if 300,000 people joined. Within 7 days, the group membership had exceeded 400,000 and “Ruckus” wrote that if the group became the largest on Facebook, he would post a video of his threesome. Facebook administrators deleted the “Brody Ruckus” profile and his group, since it represented a breach in the site’s Terms of Service agreement, specifically with reference to: “impersonating any person or entity, or falsely stating or otherwise misrepresenting yourself, your age or your affiliation with any person or entity.”

In an interview with the online newspaper eSchool News, Ruckus President Mike Bebel said that the Brody Ruckus affair “was an exercise conducted by one of our marketing teams. It wasn’t something we had any real designs around. It took on a life of its own. It was a good learning exercise for us, but not something that we would repeat.” [8]

In a letter to the editor of Student Life the student newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis, Bebel stated that “contrary to what has been reported in other media outlets … Ruckus did not use this [Brody Ruckus] profile to market the Ruckus service.” He also acknowledged that “the creation of the Brody Ruckus profile was ill-advised and I can promise that this tactic will not be repeated.”[9]”

So this is the group behind all the “Brody Ruckus gets a threesome” drama on Facebook. Now the question is, do we support such shenanigans?